Please help me welcome today’s guest, Colleen L. Donnelly…
Please tell us a little about yourself, where are you from? Where do you live now? Family? Pets?
I consider the Midwestern US my home, though I did spread my wings in early adulthood and explored other places. My kids are grown and have struck out on their own…except for one. An adopted Shih tzu from the pound named Lucy, who has taken over and rules the roost.
Where did you get the idea for Katy Walsh?
My dad told the story of a woman preacher in their country church when he was a boy around 1940. She traveled from farm to farm in her Model A pickup and could be heard whistling long before she arrived. From those few details, “Katy Walsh” sprouted. However, she grew into a young woman whose father was murdered, who had a family mystery to solve, and who rejected her father’s final wish that she preach.
Why did you choose this genre (is it something you’ve written in before)? I’m old enough that I don’t have to do a lot of research to write a historical novel. Ha! My other reason for choosing that genre is to make my characters work harder. No modern conveniences that make communication or travel instantaneous. They have to earn what they accomplish.
Was there anything unusual, any anecdote about this book, the characters, title, process, etc, you’d like to share?
A radical change in my family brought my “write a book every year” practice to a halt. With a complete redirection of my time and energy, creativity all but vanished. For over four years, “Katie Walsh” was little more than a title on a page, until a new normal was established in my life, and the words began to flow again. This story turned out nothing like my others, so I considered keeping it out of publication, until I realized I had written a slice-of-life autobiography. Katie’s story begins when her family is turned upside down and her desire to write is uprooted. Katie and I both had to undergo the process of finding ourselves and starting over again.
What is the most difficult thing about writing a book?
The due diligence it requires.
What was the most difficult thing about this one in particular?
Not worrying about myself when all I could do was stare at my laptop. Writers write, and for a long time I couldn’t.
What do you dislike that most people wouldn’t understand?
Television.
What was your first job?
Selling magazines by phone, but I was fired immediately when I cancelled a large number of subscriptions I sold to a woman who clearly didn’t understand what she was agreeing to.
What’s your favorite book of all time and why?
“The Monk” by Matthew Lewis, who wrote the best internal clash of good and evil I have ever read.
What’s your favorite childhood book?
“Little Hippo” which was a story about using others’ inability to think outside the box to your advantage…it isn’t as creepy as it sounds.
What is your favorite quote?
Possibly a poem: “It has ever been since time began, and ever will be till time lose breath, that love is a mood – no more – to a man, and love to a woman is life or death.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
If you could be a character in any of your books, who would you be? Magdalena in “Asked For.” She is the most fabulous secondary character I have ever written!
Have you written any other books that are not published?
Yes, the five they say you are supposed to write before you are good enough to be published.
What is the toughest criticism given to you as an author?
The one I took to heart as a fellow author’s critique about my writing, when it was actually intended as a criticism of me and my initial success. I accepted several debilitating critiques from that person before I realized they were tearing me down instead of helping my writing improve.
What has been the best compliment?
I couldn’t put your book down.
Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?
Louise Penny. She tells a mystery poetically.
Blurb:
Katie Walsh expects to write a love story someday. The hero resembles her father, and the heroine the deceased mother she never knew but imagines from the longing on her father’s face.
Katie doesn’t expect her father to be murdered, or his will to leave their farm to Guy Knowles, the man she hoped to marry, and order her to another state. Betrayed by the men she trusted, what should have become a love like no other withers and dies.
Until Ted Howard, who doesn’t fit the hole Guy left in her heart. Instead, he fits himself into what she needs—someone who will stay, protect her, and break his own heart for her if needed.
Excerpt:
When our neighbor, Guy Knowles, began to drop by and take me for long but mostly silent walks across Papa’s pasture, I wondered if my parents had done the same thing and if my excitement mirrored what my mother’s might have been. Did she, like me, translate every quiet step into tender words? Did she see lifelong devotion on Papa’s face then, like I watched for it now on Guy’s?
I expected my love story—the one I would write and the one I would live—to be like theirs. What I didn’t expect was that both stories would begin the day a stranger came to my door and told me my father had just been killed. Killed, not died.
Nor did I expect this tale of “A Love Like No Other” to reach full bloom in a tiny jail cell far away.
Buy link:
Amazon pre-order link: https://amzn.to/45pYv4q
About the Author:
Colleen L Donnelly was born and raised in the US Midwest but ventured to other parts of the country as an adult to experience life from other perspectives. Besides writing, she spends time outdoors, antique hunting, reading, or watching a good movie. Even though she retired from a career in laboratory science, she is never bored and always busy at something.
Author Alicia Dean 